Posts Tagged ‘commission’

In the last year, the California Coastal Commission has made bold moves to protect the dwindling coast of California and in doing so, made some powerful enemies. For instance, the commission resisted allowing Shell and Exxon from drilling and fracking on Banning Ranch, last large open coastal marsh in Orange County. They stopped Pacific Gas and Electric from blasting whales with seismic air canons at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County. And probably the biggest shot heard ’round the world was their ruling to forbid the captive breeding of orcas at Seaworld San Diego as a condition of approval for bigger tanks.

These powerful business interests, who see the coast as a profit center to be plundered, have struck back, forcing the Commission to remove their own Dr. Charles Lester, no longer the Executive Director as of yesterday. Lester, hand-picked by the late great Peter Douglas, was favored 890-2 by speakers at the meeting in Morro Bay this past Wednesday, but the vote still went against him, 7-5.

Now the call is out demanding Governor of California Jerry Brown to remove and replace his Coastal Commission appointees, (Effie Turnbull, Erik Howell, Martha McClure, and *Wendy Mitchell, who is a lobbyist for PG&E), all 4 having voted for Lester’s ouster in spite of enormous public opposition.

With the petition demanding the removal of the Brown appointees only 24 hours old, the balance is the same- so far, 207-1 to have them removed and the commission’s integrity and independence restored.